​in this blog today I would like to share with you my EVS experience in Greece. So first of all let me introduce to you. My name's Salah Abdikarim Mohamed originally from Somalia but currently living in Italy, Sicily.

I get the possibility to participate to this EVS in Greece at Kalamata thanks to my sending organisation InformaGiovani.During this experience, I learnt something amazing…how to make cords, and net, loom (you will see in the following pictures) and how it transforms to a boat by recycled plastic bottles and other materials using fiberglass and chemical things like polyester.

Making plastic cords.

Plastic shredder bycicle.

Boat made by recycled plastic bottles

During the activity we were followed by an architect man who is working the project with us and also he was teaching how to do the tings and giving us indications, also we get some help by Messinian boat makers (there were father and his son).

The architect and me.

This project of recycling is a good idea because we can reduce the pollution environment in this world and produce something usefully. We were also working with kids from local schools and we had opportunity to share this message with them. I really liked working with them.

We also visited a permaculture farm, I learnt how to make cob kitchen and also we made seedballs.

For me this was a great opportunity also to work with other volunteers who came from 6 different countries, Germany, Croatia, Spain, Latvia, Portugal, and Sweden. I had the chance to know different cultures, we intergrated each other and we didn't had any problems just sometimes it happened small misunderstanding.

Together with some volunteers.

Also I tried to get familiar with Greek people but little bit was hard because most of them wanted to speak Greek language…but really there are some people that we were speaking in English. However after some time I curiously start learning Greek and I finally learnt some Greek phrases. This was great for me and one night I went a party where they had traditional music...this was also fantastic, there I met new elder friends.

New Greek friends.

During my EVS, I also had the chance to visit Athens. What I liked the most is Acropolis and I tested Gyro, a greek dish.

Visiting Athens.

Again, my last chance, I would like to say thanks to the president of association “I Girasoli”, Calogero Santoro, and all the members of “I Girasoli”, that gave me this opportunity and he’s the one that told me about this programme. I remember one day, me and him, we were travelling and he said to me: “there’s Erasmus+, so…do you like to go?” and I really liked his pure idea and accepted, for me also I needed it to travel and get new experiences.